


Tell Me When I've Had Enough

by justsleepwalkin



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Explicit Language, M/M, POV Multiple, post heir to the demon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-02-27
Packaged: 2018-01-13 23:04:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1243885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justsleepwalkin/pseuds/justsleepwalkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I feel like all I ever do is cause your family pain."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally inspired by the “Time of Death” preview, but now that the episode has aired, well. No spoilers past “Heir to the Demon.” I've been wanting to write something for this pairing, and I also wanted to do something for AO3 1 Million, but this kind of ran away from me before I could.
> 
> If anyone knows any ep that shows the inside of Lance's present-day home, I'd appreciate it. I skimmed through episodes trying to find a reference, but I'm starting to think that maybe I imagined ever seeing inside.
> 
> Eventually I might come back to give this a second editing job. I never quite realized how many words/phrases I frequent sometimes, aha.
> 
> Last thing: I don't really know why there's random spaces in the formatting. I really need to go back to writing my fics with HTML already in them, so I don't have to watch what AO3's Rich Text does to the whole thing.
> 
> [(♫)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgW4EFaqmEs)

Lance unlocks the door to his apartment and shoulders it open enough to slide his grocery bags inside. He makes it the rest of the way in himself, mumbling annoyance at the half gallon of milk that falls out of the plastic, then closes the door behind him and relocks it. He makes it several steps in before his eyes fall on a disturbing irregularity to his apartment's decor: the Arrow. And it isn't just the Arrow in his usual mysterious act, it's the Arrow half slumped over a small side tableand unmoving, his face ducked against the woodand his hood hiding his head, as is normal.

 

He scans around the rest of the apartment for any sign of disarray, but nothing jumps out at him. Finally, he steps over to the vigilante and nudges him in the side with a foot. He frowns. No quiver, no arrows. That doesn't seem right. “ _Hey_ ,” Lance snaps, trying to rouse him. He doesn't want to physically jostle the man too much, afraid of breaking the unspoken agreement that Lance wasn't going to try and uncover the Arrow's identity. He's not on the task force anymore; he doesn't have to put himself in that position.

 

“Seriously, get up!” he yells. “You're starting to freak me out.” He nudges the Arrow again, harder, with his foot. That causes the body to finally start to shift. “I think you've got some explaining to do.” An explanation doesn't come. The Arrow doesn't even make a sound, not a single groan, though he quickly pats around himself as though he's trying to find something, and he keeps his head down. Lance backs up and gives him the space he typically wants.

 

The Arrow doesn't stand as graceful as Lance would have expected him to. He wobbles about, his back to Lance, his hood jostling side to side as he glances around. Then, as though he's found enough of his bearings, he bolts for the nearest window.

 

It isn't often that Lance pulls a gun on the guy anymore, but he thinks he deserves a damn answer. The click of his sidearm is enough to cause the Arrow to freeze completely. “Look,” Lance says, voice tight, “It's not every day I come home after long hours to finding someone unconscious on my floor and not a single sign of forced entry. Will you just tell me what the hell happened?”

 

The Arrow remains frozen in place. Lance is perfectly happy to wait this out as long as he has to.

 

After a few moments longer, the Arrow reaches up to pull his hood down, and very slowly turns to face Lance. His nice new mask is gone and so is his voice modulator; Lance realizes this all in the same time frame as he thinks _“Oliver Queen, I_ _knew it”_ and _“no really, what the hell is going on.”_

 

“Your daughter has a twisted sense of humor,” Oliver says. His eyes are cautious. He still holds himself like Lance might shoot him at any moment. Lance lowers his gun.

 

“Yeah?” Lance scoffs. “Which one?” He should be asking things like _“Why are you the Arrow?”_ and _“What possibly made you think any of this was a good idea?”_ but honestly he already knows the answers, and they're not as vital to him right now.

 

“Sara,” Oliver answers. “Apparently she thought dumping me here was a great show of her...” He licks at his lips, thinking. “Affection,” he says at last.

 

“Alright. What did you do to her?” Lance crosses his arms.

 

“What—why am I automatically at fault?”

 

Lance just keeps staring at him.

 

“Look—it's not like it wasn't a—a mutual arrangement,” Oliver replies, indignant.

 

Oh, _no_. “Aw hell—you were having sex with her, weren't you?” It makes sense, of course, Lance thinks wryly. It wouldn't have really surprised him if there was something going on between the Arrow and his daughter, and that was before Lance knew that Oliver Queen was the Arrow. Past relations coupled on top of vigilante activities? Sheesh.

 

“Well. I guess. She was trying for that, anyway.”

 

“Are you saying my daughter's—”

 

“No!” Oliver interrupts quickly. “I'm not saying anything about your daughter! I'm saying _I_ screwed up. We got partway through and I couldn't...” he trails off, much to Lance's pleasure. He didn't need to hear about Sara's sexual exploits, please and _thank you_.

 

“Ah, Laurel,” Lance says, nodding his head in understanding.

 

Oliver glances away to hide his sudden frustration. “If Laurel was the reason why, I think Sara would have left me there. And not knock me out. And probably have given me my arrows, too. I think Laurel's still trying to kill me.”

 

“So what? You got someone else that'll deal with your screwed up dual-identity? Don't tell me, it's Miss—”

 

“There's no one!” Oliver yells, his gaze snapping back to Lance's, eyes narrowed. “Look, I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry you found out about me this way and I'm sorry she dumped me off here—I'm sure she thinks she's helping, but it's—it's more complicated than that.”

 

“How's she helping by bringing you _here_?”

 

Oliver rolls his eyes and turns away. He heads towards the window again, jerking his hood up roughly. “It's not important,” he answers with more force than necessary.

 

“She sure thought so!”

 

“She was wrong!”

 

“ _Fine_.” Lance dumps his sidearm on the couch after putting the safety back on. He turns to deal with his groceries, and says in the calmest, most conversational tone that he can manage, “I'll just give her a ring in a bit, see what she has to say about the whole thing.” He can feel Oliver's glare, but he ignores it, picking up his bags of groceries and walking past Oliver to the kitchen to put things away. After, he looks at Oliver, his brows raised, and says idly, “Oh, you're still here?” when he very well knew that _of course_ Oliver was still here. Whatever Sara's reason for leaving him at Lance's, Oliver didn't want to risk Sara telling her father. “You gonna talk, or just stand there taking up space all day?”

 

Oliver's lips thin into a line. The hood shadowing his face made his glare look worse than it was. He's warring with himself, but then he mutters a quiet curse, and takes off. Lance shakes his head. He hopes he doesn't have to worry about more unexpected appearances like this. His apartment should be off limits. He sighs and cracks open a beer, then sits next to his sidearm and pulls out his phone.

 

If Oliver thought he wouldn't go through with calling Sara, he was dead wrong.

 

Sara doesn't answer right away; Lance almost expects it to go to voice mail, when she finally picks up. “Hi, Dad.”

 

“Hey, sweetie. You wanna tell me why you left Oliver at my place?”

 

There's a pause on her end. Then, “He's not still there?”

 

“Nope. Just escaped out the window.”

 

“ _Ollie_ ,” she says the nickname like a curse, and sighs. “He's too damn stubborn for his own good, I can't believe him. You didn't chase him off, did you? I mean, you found out who he was, so...”

 

“Can't say I'm surprised. If the 'hood' fits.” He rubs at his brow with a knuckle. “He nearly got out of here without saying a single word.”

 

“Well, I did take his modulator...”

 

“And his arrows.”

 

“He didn't need them! He was safe with you.”

 

'course, Lance pulled a gun on the guy, but that's besides the point. He probably wouldn't have shot the Arrow.

 

_Probably_.

 

“So _are_ you going to tell me?”

 

“It _should_ be him,” she murmurs. “He doesn't like people telling his secrets.”

 

Maybe that's why Oliver chose to leave; he knew Sara wouldn't spill his secret if Lance _did_ end up calling her.

 

“He said it wasn't important.”

 

She huffs. “Of course he did. Are you worried about him?”

 

He blinks. It isn't a question that he's expecting. He nearly answers right away, but then he takes the time to actually tumble the question through his mind. “He's much more 'tense wire' than I'm used to the Arrow _or_ Oliver Queen being.” Although neither one of those people are _real_ ; they both wear masks and Lance has to wonder which one is more like the real Oliver Queen. He wonders if _Oliver_ even remembers who his true self is, under all his masks. “A person makes mistakes that way.”

 

“So you're worried about him.”

 

“Maybe a little,” he admits. He takes a sip of his beer.

 

“I can keep an eye on the Arrow, but I can't watch after Ollie. If Laurel sees us...”

 

Yeah. Lance isn't sure what to do with Laurel right now. Dinah, thankfully, has reached out to try and help, since all of his attempts have only seemed to make things worse.

 

“How about this: _should_ I be worried?”

 

Sara hesitates. “I think it'll be alright.” But that hesitation was enough for Lance to be nervous about.


	2. Chapter 2

“I can't believe you would do that to me, Sara!” Oliver yells. The muffled music from the club fills the following silence. She stares him down and he stares back until his anger forces him into moving, just so he's doing _something_ with it. He gestures erratically at the display case where his suit has properly returned to, and then to the rest of the room.

 

“Ollie, you could have run if you were that out of your depth.”

 

“I didn't have a choice! He pulled a gun on me! You didn't exactly leave me with anything to cover my bases! Did you really expect me to reveal _another_ secret, after I had been forced to reveal that I was the Arrow?”

 

Her father failed to mention the gun, but she's not all that surprised. “He took it well though, didn't he?” she insists. “You could have told him the rest, Ollie.”

 

“ _What_ would that have accomplished, Sara?”

 

She looks at him sadly. “You could have a chance to be _happy_ , Oliver.”

 

His face twists into a bitter smile. “I don't _get_ to be happy, Sara.”

 

“What's with all of the yelling?” Felicity interrupts, walking into the main room with Diggle at her side.

 

Oliver doesn't look at them, his narrowed eyes still focused on Sara. “You both should know that Detective Lance now knows my secret.”

 

“What?” Diggle asks. “Are you serious? How did _that_ happen?” When Oliver watches Sara, Diggle turns to look at her, frowning. “Did you tell your father?”

 

Her stance shifts into the defensive. “Of course I didn't. I wouldn't do that to Oliver.”

 

“Yes, because what you did instead was much better. Thank you, Sara.” He finally looks at the other two. “Excuse me, I need some air.”

 

Oliver's nerves are frayed to the point that he's not sure how to fix them. Between his mother and having to keep _more_ secrets from Thea, his uncertainty about the state of the city, and now this? He doesn't need this on top of it. He needs Sara back on his side, there's too much of a forming rift between them where she thinks she's helping, but he doesn't _want_ her help.

 

_Two vigilantes, perched high over a city that they don't know how to save._

 

“ _Where was your head last night, Ollie?”_

 

“ _You don't want that answer.”_

 

“ _...Is it my sister?”_

 

“ _No.” He looks at her, pained. “Just drop it. You don't want to know.”_

 

“ _I_ do _. You're hurting.”_

 

_There's a lot going on. Of course he's hurting. His family keeps falling apart and he keeps having to show Thea that it's all okay. “Please,” he croaks, nearly to the point of pleading with her. They had sex; it went wrong. Could they just leave it at that? Not go into that they were both longing for two different people?_

 

 _He wanted Sara. He_ wanted _to want Sara. Even as he tried so hard to make last night work, she saw through him and called him out. He really thought he could do it._

 

_She sighs. “I told you mine, Ollie,” she says, quiet and knowing it's a little childish, but she can't help fix a problem that she doesn't understand._

 

_Nyssa. Oliver couldn't say he was shocked, even if he had thought they were done, what with the poisoning and the kidnapping, but Sara's free of the League now; did that change things that Oliver wasn't aware of?_

 

“ _Sara—”_

 

“ _I'm sorry,” she says quickly, backtracking. “I won't ask any more.”_

 

_He could swan dive off this rooftop, shoot an arrow with a cable, and be gone. Free of this conversation. Instead, he clamps down on his thoughts and says, “Your father.”_

 

 _Her eyes widen. “_ What _?”_

 

_He puts a hand onto his forehead and has to put all his willpower into not tugginghis hood further over his face. “Please don't make me repeat myself.”_

 

“Ollie _,” she whispers, awed. “Are you going to tell him?”_

 

“ _Of course I'm not. I can see it now, that'll go over great. How about I just tell him I'm the Arrow while I'm at it?” he sneers. She doesn't even flinch. “I'm sorry about last night,” he tells her honestly, trying to ease his tone back into something more conversational. “Now you know why, so can we please never discuss this again.”_

 

_She doesn't nod. She doesn't say anything. Still, Oliver thinks they're done with it. He doesn't expect Sara to take him out with an elbow carefully placed to the back of his head when they're heading to the Verdant and he's turned away from her. He sure as hell doesn't expect to later wake up to Quentin Lance's voice and an irksome nudging to his side. He doesn't expect to have to swallow down his voice when his modulator is missing, doesn't expect his arrows to be gone, and he seriously couldn't fucking expect Sara to put him in this situation._

 

It's too much. Oliver can't keep dealing with all this.

 

When Felicity calls him, he lets it go to voice mail, sure that she's asking him what happened, and maybe talking to him again about his mother. He doesn't want to think about either. Maybe he should take Roy up on sparring, but with his head out of sorts as it is, and Roy's not-very-controlled strength, Oliver's pretty sure the kid will mess him up. Oliver isn't that desperate for a distraction.

 

When Diggle calls him, Oliver is sure it's because Felicity asked him to. Oliver ignores it, too, but when Diggle tries a second round, Oliver answers. “I'm really not in the mood to talk to any—”

 

“Oliver,” Diggle breaks in with a nervous rumble. “Something's happened.”

 

Oliver tenses. _Something's happened_ trips around in his head. It does laps before Oliver manages a shaky, “What?”

 

“Someone's infiltrated the place. Sara and Felicity have been taken; Sara was the target, Felicity went with her of her own free will before I could stop it; she's got some kind of tracking signal on, but it's weak. The place is a wreck, Oliver. ...Oliver?”

 

Oliver's brain is trying to turn on auto-pilot. The switch is on the fritz. “Where's Roy?” he asks.

 

“Not answering.”

 

Oliver swallows. “I'll... I'll call you back. Or be there in a bit. Whichever comes first.” He hangs up. Breathe, Oliver. He stares down at his contact list. Thumbs it to DET. LANCEand shudders. It's not that he had any reserves that something could actually be possible between them, but he's pretty sure that if he makes this call, Lance is going to put him back at the top of his shit list, right where he was after he got home from the island. He has to make the call though.

 

“Hello?”

 

Oliver looks up at a streetlamp until his vision warps from the bright light, and then he closes his eyes. “I need to tell you something and you're not going to like it.”


	3. Chapter 3

When Lance met up with Oliver, he thought Oliver was going to tell him what he held back in the apartment. Oliver wasn't exactly specific, after all. Ominous statement, street corner location. It was about as much as Lance normally got when Oliver called him as the Arrow, minus the rooftop.

 

He pulls up to a sidewalk in a relatively quiet part of the Glades, and Oliver is pacing, his arms locked behind his neck. Lance slams his car door shut and walks cautiously up to him, afraid he's going to bolt or snap or anything completely out of character.

 

“So, spill.” Cut to the chase.

 

Oliver stops his pacing and only half turns to face Lance. “I'm sorry,” he whispers. “It's my fault. I left—I—I wasn't there.”

 

Lance frowns. The words don't sound like the kind that fit with some grand secret that made Oliver uncomfortable and Sara worried. “What are you talking about?” he asks.

 

“Someone kidnapped Sara,” Oliver tells him. “Felicity's with her so there's a trace on them but it's weak and we're trying to get it cleared up but...” He shakes his head. “I should have been there, I was just... _upset_.” Over Sara. Over Lance. What the hell is wrong with him and _Lances_?

 

“Jesus, kid—”

 

“I _know_. I'm _sorry_.”

 

“ _No_. Listen to me,” Lance growls. Oliver looks fearful. “Do you seriously think Sara's going to blame you for not being by her side 24/7? She can take care of herself. She'll be fine.” That's what he'll keep telling himself, anyway. He's seen her in action. She'll fight tooth and nail before she lets anyone get the best of her.

 

Oliver rocks back on his feet, still uncertain. “You're not mad?”

 

“Hell, I'm furious, but not at you. Whoever's got the nerve to kidnap my little girl is in for some serious trouble.”

 

“I know someone that can help, I just need to get in contact with them, somehow.”

 

“Well, do what you can from your end. I'll see what I can look into. If you go after her, you better call me, got it?”

 

Oliver nods. “Yeah. Of course.”

 

Lance turns and starts back to his car, but then pauses and looks back at Oliver, frowning. “You alright aside from the obvious? You don't look so good.” He's reminded about his discussion with Sara about whether or not they should be worried about Oliver. He catches a brief, bitter expression, before the kid is passive again.

 

“I'm just... tired,” Oliver answers. “It's not like I can take a vacation. I can't pull out of Starling like that.”

 

Lance remembers the last time the Arrow, still “the Hood” at the time, had disappeared from Starling. It was after the Undertaking. Lance hadn't known what to do; they needed the vigilante, but he wasn't there. Now that he knew the Arrow's identity, the disappearance made a shocking amount of sense: Tommy Merlyn, Oliver's best friend, had been killed.

 

Still, it didn't seem fair. Even as an officer, Lance was able to get some semblance of rest. Oliver couldn't. The Arrow was a symbol, and without that symbol a vacuum effect would be created as Starling tried to fill the void.

 

Dammit, what was he supposed to say?

 

“Just keep in touch, alright? Even if you don't have anything.” Someone needs to look after Oliver in Sara's absence. He gets in his car and drives off, unable to think of more to help Oliver. He thinks about going to see Laurel and Dinah, but as much right as they have to know about Sara's capture, he just can't bring himself to tell them. Truthfully, he fears Laurel's reaction. He fears she would be happy.

 

 _They can't do this, they can't keep digging this pit between them._ His family is finally all back in the same city, and yet Lance swears they've never been this fragmented.

 

He goes to the station.


	4. Chapter 4

After meeting with Lance, Oliver returns to the club. He's eased some of his tension out, but he can feel the remnants under his skin, churning up his insides. Still, he smiles when he sees his sister, putting a hand to her side and steering her away from the bar. Cheerful big brother. Nothing wrong in the slightest. Nothing crumbling apart in their family—

 

He breathes shakily. Covers it by saying, “Hi, Thea.”

 

If she notices his unease, she thinks it's for another problem entirely. “Oliver! It sounded awful downstairs earlier. Is everything okay?”

 

No. Everything's not okay and Thea _was right above it_ , but thank god at least she's safe. Oliver's smile doesn't change. “Everything's fine, don't worry, Thea. But hey, could you do something for me?” he asks her. “Could you tell Roy to call me when you see him?” If anyone can get Roy's attention, it's her. He wishes Roy would just answer the damn phone. It makes him wonder if he should get the kid a secondary phone, like what he gave to Lance. Something for emergencies like this.

 

“Oh no, Oliver.” Thea sighs. “Are you going to give him a hard time again?”

 

“No, Thea, nothing like that. Just tell him, please?”

 

She looks doubtful. “Yeah, alright.”

 

“Thank you.” He puts a hand on her shoulder and kisses the top of her head. Her worried eyes follow him as he heads downstairs.

 

“Wreck” seemed like an understatement. It pains Oliver to look over what felt like his sanctuary. Somewhere he could go to be himself, even if he wasn't going out as the Arrow. Now, glass litters the floor. Felicity's tech groans, destroyed lumps joining the glass. Arrows lay scattered. He picks up his bow carefully and brushes it off.

 

And yet still pristine and completely untouched in its case is his Arrow outfit.

 

Oliver's grip on his bow tightens and he holds in the yell he so badly wants to unleash. He hears Diggle crunch over glass to step up to his side and put a hand on his shoulder. Oliver shrugs out of it and storms away. He angrily rights a turned over table and slams his bow on top of it.

 

“How did this happen?” he shouts at Diggle, not expecting an answer.

 

“Oliver, calm down.”

 

“ _Calm down_? How am I supposed to be calm, Diggle? Do you _see this place_? And, I don't know, the _distinct lack_ of our _friends_?”

 

“Yeah, I've noticed, thanks, but stressing out about it isn't going to help us find them any faster.” He places his phone on the table besides Oliver's bow. “Look.” He points at the screen, where a map is pulled open and a red dot slowly blinks in and out, changing position every so often. “That's more than we had earlier; the signal's getting less scrambled, which likely means they've almost arrived to wherever it is they're going. It's also stopped changing different sides of the city and been consistent in the eastern Glades. So you can head out that way... _if_ you calm _down_.”

 

Oliver glares at Diggle, then turns towards the case without a word. He doesn't need to be calm to deal with the problem, and he certainly doesn't need Diggle trying to control him.

 

“Tell me when the signal has settled on a location.”

 

“ _Oliver_ —”

 

“If it makes you feel any better,” Oliver growls, cutting him off, “Detective Lance will be with me.” He looks over his shoulder and sees Diggle ease. Apparently it _does_ make him feel better. Oliver tries to rein in his frustration. He suits up, then calls Lance to give him a location to meet up, and then he's off without more than a few words of conversation with Diggle.

 

“So you don't have an actual location yet,” Lance is saying.

 

Voice modulated, Oliver mumbles, “ _No_ , but at least we have an idea of what quadrant of the Glades she's in. When the GPS pins down the exact location, we should be relatively close by.”

 

“Fine. And we can't take my car, why?”

 

“I am not riding in your car like this. Neither of us need people to see that.”

 

“Yeah, but you don't _have_ to be like that right now.”

 

“I'm more prepared this way,” Oliver argues. He's glad the modulator hides how petulant he would normally sound, though Lance still gives him a dull look like he knows better. “Alright, I'm sorry you don't have your car. It's a little late now.”

 

“I'm not adept at scaling buildings like you are.”

 

Ah. Oliver could understand that kind of worry. It's a legitimate concern that Oliver gives some thought to. They've made it a fair distance through the Glades on foot, Oliver keeping more in the shadows than Lance, but eventually Oliver is going to want to get a better feel of their surroundings, and he prefers being up high.

 

He grins. “We'll take the stairs.” Lance thinks it's an awful idea. He says so the entire way. Oliver just chuckles and lets Lance's complaints keep his mind distracted. It's not breaking and entering if the building is abandoned, Oliver reasons, and if anyone actually questions them, well, Lance is an officer. He was checking on an Arrow sighting. Ha. Ha. Get it?

 

His phone goes off. Oliver pauses in a stairwell to look at it. Diggle. “Yeah?” he answers, glancing over his shoulder at Lance. Diggle's voice comes through in pieces, so Oliver keeps moving up the stairs, hoping to find better reception, but they still have a long way to the rooftop, so he ducks down a hall and finds an office, only to see that it's windowless. “Seriously?”

 

“The Glades isn't exactly known for its grand architecture,” Lance answers. He steps into the room after Oliver. His foot touches one spot of the floor, and the floor answers in a loud, eerie creak.

 

Oliver tenses. It should be nothing, he thinks, but for some reason alarm bells are sounding in his head and he says, “Hold on,” to Diggle and drops his hand down, holding his phone at his side. “We shouldn't be here.”

 

“Oh yeah, I already told you _that_ awhile ago,” Lance replies.

 

“No, I mean…” Oliver looks around the room. The bare essentials for office work surround them. Whoever did work in this building before it was abandoned must have hated their life. “Something isn't right.”

 

That gets a more serious reaction out of Lance. “What?”

 

“I don't know. Let's just...” Oliver starts to head back for the door. He moves his feet heel-to-toe, one at a time, but even then he realizes too late just how much trouble he's in.

 

The building isn't structurally sound.

 

The floor starts to give.

 

Oliver feels panic seize up in him, overtaking all his anger, all his stress, all his exhaustion. He yells out, “ _Go_!” to Lance, but like his daughters, the detective is equally stubborn. He reaches out to help Oliver and gets caught in the mess as the rest of the floor caves away from them. Oliver throws his phone and tries to get a hand on an arrow while in free fall, but just as quick as the fall is, he hits the next floor. Now, he's more than pleased about the office's lack of décor.

 

“Columns are giving,” Lance is saying in between heaving and groaning. He drags himself over to Oliver with his elbows, grabbing Oliver by the shoulder. “We have to get out of this line of rooms.” He shakes Oliver. “Hey. _Hey_. Listen to me. We have to _move_ , we're going to _keep falling_.”

 

Oliver squints at him. There's too much dust in the air. He doesn't _think_ they'll keep falling. To him, it feels like they've stopped.

 

Lance growls at him. “This place has been _waiting_ to collapse since the Undertaking. Earthquake machine? Ring any bells?”

 

That's just what Oliver needs: another reminder of his failure to Starling, and another reminder of his mother.

 

“ _MOVE_.”

 

Oliver moves. He pushes to his feet and stumbles towards a door at the end of the room, shouldering it open and barreling into another, just as drab, office. Lance comes in after him.

 

“I think we would have been fine,” Oliver is saying, right as he hears the rest of the floor in the previous room continue its descent. Oliver cringes and steps deeper into the office, watching the ruin through the doorway. The office shakes around them, but the column system that holds it remains stable and separate from the previous system. Oliver swallows. “Well. Now what?” he says into the darkness.

 

Lance turns on a small flashlight, checking out what they had to work with. He goes over to the desk, righting a fallen over lamp and tries the switch. Flickering light fills the room, fuse hissing a bit, and then the light stabilizes. Lance sighs in relief and turns off his flashlight, then starts rifling through drawers. “It's pretty cleared out,” he says.

 

“Great. This is _just great_!” Oliver yells. He looks out the door down at the rubble, then up and into darkness. Angry, he slams the door shut. He paces along the walls, looking for anything of use and checking for any other weak spots, but there's nothing. _Nothing_. He sags into a corner. “This week just keeps getting better.”

 

Lance scoffs. “Sorry you don't have more preferable company for the extended period.”

 

Oliver ducks his head so that his hood hides his grimace. He finally switches off his modulator, doubting that anyone was nearby to overhear them.

 

They'd be _lucky_ if there was someone nearby; maybe they could get help. As it was, Diggle would have some idea as to where Oliver was by the last known location of his phone (Oliver doubts that it was still intact underneath all that rubble), but Diggle's priorities should be Sara and Felicity.

 

God, he hopes Diggle's gotten in contact with Roy.

 

“We can't just _give up_ ,” Lance says.

 

“If we try to break out, we risk bringing the rest of the building down.” Oliver slides down the wall to sit. “Someone should eventually come looking for me. After they get Sara, I hope.”

 

“So we wait, then.”

 

“Yeah. We wait.”

 

Lance nods. He sinks into the chair and puts his legs up on the desk, crossing them at his ankles. He winces a bit at the pain in his muscles. The fall could have been a lot worse, but it still wasn't a picnic. “Well, seems like a good time to talk about whatever Sara wanted you to say.”

 

Oliver laughs. It echoes through the room. “No, I don't think so.”

 

Lance rolls his eyes. “Look, you seem a bit more loose-cannon than normal, and I just want to know why.”

 

Oliver's eyes stay fixated to a spot on the floor. “People I care about have been kidnapped.”

 

“Yeah, I get that. But that's happened before. I'm not saying that you don't have a right to be frazzled over it; I'm saying something else is wrong with you.”

 

Oliver's hands curl into fists over his knees. “You don't know me,” he says, voice low.

 

“Nope. I don't. Not one bit. I don't know the Arrow, and I certainly don't know Oliver Queen; I doubt many people do, aside from your secret posse. I think Sara's worried about you though—hell, _I'm_ worried about you. We just want to help, okay?”

 

“None of you can help me!” Oliver shouts. He rises to his feet in one fluid motion, his hood falling back. He moves across the room. “I don't _want_ it!”

 

Lance remains calm and meets Oliver's eyes. “Doesn't mean you don't need it.”

 

Oliver seethes. He's _so_ _tired_. He just wants to stop this. _All_ this.

 

He tells Lance through clenched teeth, “Everyone keeps asking me if Laurel is the problem.” And by everyone he meant the detective and Sara, but they were enough. “ _Laurel_ is not the problem,” he insists, voice tight. “ _You're_ the problem!” he yells.

 

“What?” Lance laughs. He shakes his head. He pulls his feet off the desk and sets both to the floor and ogles Oliver. “Excuse me? Is this some kind of joke?” Because that's all it can be, right?

 

“It's not a joke. Do you really think if it was a joke, Sara would have left me at your place? That's a little excessive for a joke, don't you think?” And then when the ensuing silence takes over, Oliver wishes more than ever that they weren't trapped. He had paced these walls already, looking for a give, and he knows that another round of pacing won't help him uncoveranything, but he needs something to do. He can't look at Lance right now.

 

Lance had to admit there was a certain attraction to the Arrow. His daughters had seen it at one point or another, and even he had always seen it, especially after the Undertaking. But when you add _Oliver Queen_ to the mix, that's when Lance had to distance himself from the whole situation. The Arrow was one thing; Oliver Queen was something else entirely.

 

“Nothing can come of this, you know that, right?” he tells Oliver, choosing his words carefully.

 

Oliver grits his teeth and glares over his shoulder. “I _know that_ , thank you, Detective. Trust me, it's perfectly clear in my mind.” He turns away again, eyes scanning the walls, following cracks and curves and water stains. Cigarette marks. He wishes he still had his phone. They were on their own. Oliver had no idea the state of Felicity and Sara; he can only pray that they were doing alright on their own. Sara could take care of herself, Lance had said to Oliver.

 

He has to get out of here. He shouldn't have said anything, it isn't like he can't handle keeping a secret, but there's too many secrets piling up now, and too many people will get hurt if the Arrow is revealed, or the secret about Thea and his mother.

 

This way, at least it's only Oliver himself that gets hurt.


	5. Chapter 5

Except now that it's out there, Lance can't stop thinking about it. He _tries_ , he really does. He looks at his phone—both of them—but neither has any signal. The rubble likely made it worse, otherwise he would have thought that the phone given to him by the Arrow/Hood way-back-when would work. He tries not to look at Oliver, but when the archer keeps his back turned, Lance just ends up watching him.

 

The kid's bordering exhaustion, that much is obvious. There's more to his stress, but thus far Lance has gotten two secrets out of him—one of which that Sara wanted him to know—and he doesn't think he has any right to dig for more, even if it might help wind Oliver down. If this keeps up too long, he's eventually going to shutdown, likely at the worst possible time.

 

 _Tense wire_.

 

He stares at the desk's surface. “It's not even that—” he finds himself saying, and he doesn't know where to go from there. He stops. Tries again. “Laurel's... a mess. I thought that with Sara around, maybe she'd start putting her life back together. Letting people back in, to help her. But... even the tiniest thing sets her off now. She wouldn't handle it well if I—if we—were to...” he trails off again. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Oliver turn briefly to stare at him strangely.

 

Yeah. Lance would stare at himself strangely, too.

 

“It's alright, Detective. I understand,” Oliver says.

 

Lance is pretty sure Oliver _doesn't_ understand, but he keeps his mouth shut. Tries to take the “out” that has been given to him. Hell, he already brushed this off. He needs to stick to his guns.

 

“ _I_ don't understand,” Lance says instead. He shifts his gaze to glare at Oliver's back. “Nothing about you is ever easy, is it? You were supposed to still be that spoiled rich kid. You weren't supposed to be the city's primary vigilante!”

 

“Yeah, well.” Oliver shrugs, but he doesn't turn around. “That's kind of the point. Oliver Queen: the guy people can forget.”

 

Lance growls. That's stupid. It's _just stupid_. Living a fake life, showing everyone an illusion, just so no one suspects a thing. _Lance_ suspected. Lance might even go as far to say that he _still_ always suspected, he just stopped caring about it.

 

“So who's the real Oliver Queen? Where does the line between him and the Arrow stop?”

 

Oliver remains silent for long enough that Lance is sure he won't answer, or that he's simply ignoring Lance completely. Eventually, he says, barely a whisper, “I'm not really sure.”

 

“Oliver, if you keep on this path of yours, you're going to stop existing altogether. You, and every one of your personas.”

 

“I know.”

 

“ _I know”_? “That's unacceptable!” Lance snaps.

 

Oliver turns at last. He's smiling. Lance knows it's a lie.

 

“Sara will be able to protect the city in my stead. She's got the League's training in her, and now that Nyssa released her, she'll be fine. And she won't be alone in it.”

 

Lance gets to his feet and slowly walks over to Oliver, trying to be as nonthreatening as possible so that he can slam Oliver against the nearest wall when he gets close enough. _"That is not the point_ ,” he yells at Oliver, his hands digging into the kid's shoulders. He knows that Oliver could turn the tables before Lance could blink, could kill him so easily. He doubts Oliver would go _that_ far, but Lance expects there to be pain in his near future.

 

Oliver doesn't retaliate.

 

Lance _wishes_ that he did.

 

“And what about your family? What happens to them when you're gone? What about the people you leave behind?”

 

“My family is teetering over an edge,” Oliver murmurs. “My mother isn't the person I hoped so badly for her to be. My sister has Roy. That—that might be enough for her. Everyone else...” He shakes his head. “They'd be fine.” He smirks and tilts his head. “What, don't tell me you'd miss me, Detective.”

 

Of course he would _miss you_ , you stupid kid. Not only would he be the one trying to pick up the pieces of everyone around him dealing with the loss— _again—_ of Oliver Queen, but he would _also_ be dealing with the fallout of the Arrow no longer in Starling City. Oliver might be modest about it, but the kid is _fucking important._

 

“This isn't something to joke around about,” Lance says, frustrated.

 

Oliver looks genuinely surprised. “I'm not joking though. I'm not immortal. I've had my share of near-death experiences as the vigilante.”

 

Lance feels cold at hearing those words. He steps back, finally releasing his hold on Oliver's shoulders. “Just _how many times_ have you almost died?” he asks, his voice low. How many times did Lance not know about?

 

“Uh.” Oliver shifts, suddenly uncomfortable. “You know,” he says, voice slightly higher pitched, “I'm not actually entirely sure. I wouldn't even want to give a ballpark estimate. Besides, it really isn't something that anyone should dwell over.”

 

Oh, he'll dwell if he damn well wants to.

 

“ _Oliver_.”

 

“Boy, I sure wonder when help is going to arrive—we can't possibly have much air in this room. Maybe I should open the door, get a normal flow back in—” As Oliver starts for the door, he finds himself once again pressed to the wall by a very angry Quentin Lance. Oliver laughs nervously. “You know if you keep doing things like this, I'm going to get ideas in my head that I shouldn't.”

 

“Fuck you,” Lance hisses, and Oliver abruptly shuts up. “I'm only going to say this once, got it? So listen up. I don't know what's going on with you, I don't know your problems, your secrets, and I barely even know any facet of your true self. But you know something I _do_ know? You're important to people. This city needs _you_. Miss Smoak called you a hero. Maybe she's right, maybe she's not, but you care what happens to everyone in this city, and _that matters_. That's hard to come by. _You_ are hard to come by.”

 

“Seriously. Real mixed signals going on here.”

 

“ _Yeah_? You want mixed signals?” Because that's exactly what Lance _shouldn't_ be giving, but he kisses Oliver, anyway.

 

Oliver jerks away, startled. “No, I'm not kidding, what is—”

 

“Shut _up_ ,” Lance growls at him, and kisses him again. This time, Oliver lets him, tentatively opening under his lips, but remaining cautious. It's not like Lance can _blame_ him. _He_ was the one that said nothing could come of this, and look how long he lasted. He shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be indulging Oliver—no, but that's not it. He's indulging _himself_. He's allowed to, isn't he? Maybe that's why Sara wanted him to know, why she had to go through such lengths as to leave an unconscious Arrow at his apartment. Maybe she knew his attraction—hell, she probably understood it.

 

It's not like it should be a damn surprise.

 

He should really consider the timing a bit more, though.

 

They're trapped in an office of a half-collapsed building and Sara was kidnapped and—

 

 _Sara was kidnapped_.

 

It's not like he _forgot_. It's just that he had tried to stop thinking about it and trust that Sara would be able to get out of it. For all he knew, she already _did_.

 

He drags his mouth away from Oliver's and hangs his head. He feels Oliver shudder from where his hands grip Oliver's shoulders once more.

 

“Ah,” Oliver rasps. “See, that's more what I expected.”

 

“You can keep trying to distance yourself as much as you want, but it's really not going to change anything; I am _going_ to chase after you, the more you run.” And now that he's said it aloud, he can't change his mind. He's following this; whatever “this” is. “I'm worried about Sara.”

 

“Bet she's better off than we are.”

 

Lance laughs. “That's probably true.” He doesn't get to say more before Oliver carefully extracts himself from Lance's grip, his expression shuttering closed. Lance mentally swears, trying to think of just _how_ to chase after Oliver, but the more that Oliver retreats into his head, the more that Lance has no idea what to do.

 


	6. Chapter 6

By the time help arrives in the form of the whole gang, Oliver's taken to staying as far away from Lance as possible, watching the detective with a cagey expression. He's not sure what to do with Lance's statement about chasing him, especially since it's for a whole different kind of reason than Oliver is _used_ to Lance chasing him. He's not supposed to expect anything; he's not supposed to have a shot at being happy. This is the life he chose for himself, tangled in a web of lies, masked from every single person he's ever met.

 

He'd thought, maybe, that Sara could be something “new.” Someone to be at his side. She knew him before, on, and after the island. He thought he could even be in a physical relationship with her, after so long. He's been _starving_ for something physical again. He thought it'd be enough, thought he could _just make it work_.

 

Who was he kidding. It wouldn't have been fair. He couldn't do that to her.

 

The telltale beeping of Lance's phone is enough to jar Oliver out of his reverie. They both stare at it in confusion, until Oliver realizes that it's the Arrow phone, and he bolts to his feet over to it. He snatches it off the desk and answers it before Lance can. “Hello?”

 

“It _is_ my phone, you know,” Lance says mildly.

 

“It's technically mine,” Oliver shoots back, the first words he's said to Lance in awhile.

 

“Oliver!” Felicity says from the other end.

 

Oliver sags in relief. “ _Felicity_. You're okay. Is Sara?”

 

“Yeah. Dig and Roy helped us out. There were some mad skills all around. Now we gotta get you both out of that building before the rest of it comes down! I managed to boost some nearby signal so that we could call you. Well, call the Detective, since your phone is probably deader than dead.”

 

“Sara's fine,” Oliver whispers to Lance. “Felicity, do you guys have a plan?”

 

“Uh. Kind of? I think it kind of involves Roy breaking a lot of things.”

 

“Felicity, he could be the _reason_ everything comes down! I'm not sure I really trust his control in this kind of situation.”

 

“It's okay. Sara will be with him. She'll use her ninja-y skills and guide him, and tell him what to hit.”

 

“I don't think I like this plan.”

 

“Well, you don't really have a choice, since you're kind of trapped. Besides, they're already on their way.”

 

“He knows Detective Lance is here, right? I mean, there's no sense that he get himself revealed, too.”

 

“Yeah... I mentioned that... He just sort of shrugged and said that you needed his help.”

 

Oliver sighs. “Alright. Fine. I'll hopefully see you soon, Felicity.”

 

“Okay, Oliver.”

 

He hangs up and hands the phone to Lance.

 

Lance takes it. “What was that about?”

 

“One of my friends might be here with Sara. Just... don't freak out if he shows himself?”

 

“Let me guess, I know him.”

 

Oliver shrugs a little. “He's kind of a long story.”

 

“At least you have friends looking out for you.” He takes a step towards Oliver. Oliver takes a step away. Lance sighs and runs a hand over his head. “Are you really going to be like this?”

 

“Nothing can come of this,” Oliver says, repeating Lance's earlier words.

 

Lance rolls his eyes. “Yeah, except it already has.”

 

“Nothing _more_ can,” Oliver says firmly.

 

“ _Why_ _not_?”

 

Oliver probably should have expected the question. Instead, it rattles around him. “It just... can't.”

 

“That's not an answer, Oliver.”

 

Oliver turns his attention to the sound of rumbling. He ignores Lance and goes to pull open the door to the office, looking across the chasm of rubble and missing floors to a hole in a wall and Roy Harper standing in the threshold of it, panting, with Sara standing behind him.

 

“Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding,” Lance says from over Oliver's shoulder.

 

“I said it's a long story,” Oliver says under his breath. He gives the pair across the way a wave, then calls, “So what, you're just gonna tunnel your way here to get us out?”

 

Apparently that was exactly the plan. Oliver hated it. He still hated it even after he was free from that deathtrap of a building, but he begrudgingly thanks Roy. The building did not come crashing down on them. Three cheers for controlling strength and yada yada, all that... Oliver just wanted to go home, where he wouldn't have to deal with Lance frowning at him, despite having the prime opportunity to question not only Roy, but Diggle, too.

 

If he's lucky, his mother will be off doing some campaign work, or at least _something_ so that he didn't have to cross paths with her. He's not very confident in his luck though, especially with how Sara casts a very significant glance between him and her father. Maybe he's being a bit too obvious with ignoring Lance.

 

“Felicity, please don't make willingly-getting-kidnapped a habit,” he tells her.

 

She smiles. “It helped, didn't it?”

 

“I don't care. It's not a good habit.” He _is_ glad she was there to help though. At least someone was. “Now, I need to get off the streets before anyone sees me like this.” He grins and pulls his hood over his head. “And I need to get some real _sleep_ for once.”

 

He takes off before anyone can stop him, and tries to not think about Diggle's comment of, “Alright, what's going on?” to the rest of the group.

 

He doesn't need anyone else trying to help him.


	7. Chapter 7

“Dad?” Sara asks, turning to him.

 

He holds up his hands in defense. “Hey, don't look at me. You lot are supposed to know him better than me, right?”

 

“There's a lot of bad stuff going on between him and his mother, but I can't say more than that,” Felicity says.

 

Roy frowns. “Thea hasn't said anything about that.”

 

“She doesn't know. Don't tell her, Roy. It'll destroy Oliver more than it already has. I'm not kidding.”

 

He nods slowly, though he looks uncertain.

 

Sara is still watching Lance.

 

He's feeling increasingly uncomfortable. “Look, it's not my fault, okay. I found out what you wanted me to.” He really hopes she's the only one that knows what he's talking about. “I acted on it, but he closed himself off.”

 

Sara bites a lip. “That's odd...”

 

“You two gonna clue the rest of us in?” Diggle asks.

 

“I'd rather not, actually,” Lance answers.

 

“Um, will I have to worry about you, or can I go home?” Roy asks.

 

“What? God, no. I don't care. No one has to worry about me.” He looks pointedly at Diggle. “Go home, dammit. All of you. Oliver's probably not the only one running on the dregs of sleep.” They leave him alone with Sara. He sighs. “I don't know what to tell you, kiddo.”

 

“Oliver doesn't think he gets to be happy because of what he does.”

 

“He's got a lot of bullshit ideas in his head like that one. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I'm not.”

 

“What are you going to do?”

 

“Me? I'm going to give him a day or two to get some rest, and then I'm going to bash his head in,” he answers. He grins, all teeth.

 

True to his word, he lets Oliver have a few days to himself before he corners him in his own office. Oliver's at a loss for words when he shows up.

 

“Detective. What are you doing here?”

 

“I think it's time we talked.”

 

“I'm sorry, but I don't really have... time for anything.”

 

“Funny, your quite charming secretary seems to think so.” And things must be bad if Felicity all but waved Lance in frantically.

 

Oliver flattens his hands to the surface of his desk. He bows his head and looks to be trying to compose himself.

 

“You can't keep brushing me off, kid.”

 

“Actually, I think you'll find that I can. The benefit of being a CEO of a company is that I can call security, especially on noisy police officers that have no right to be here.”

 

Why? Why was Oliver _doing_ this to himself? “Are you just some kind of masochist, is that what's going on here?” Lance demands.

 

“Detective, please leave.”

 

“And what are you going to do when you need my help again?”

 

“ _I'll manage_ ,” Oliver spits out.

 

Lance throws up his arms and leaves. Felicity looks up at him with worried eyes. “He's getting worse, isn't he?” she asks him.

 

“Sure, I don't know. He's sure as hell not a ray of sunshine.”

 

Felicity sighs. “I don't know how to fix this.”

 

“Just give it time,” Lance tells her.

 

It took Sara dumping Oliver into Lance's apartment to even start them down this road. _That_ should have been a clue, right there, about how stubborn Oliver was. Lance should have known better from there.

 

It did give him an idea though.


	8. Chapter 8

“Oliver, Detective Lance has been kidnapped.”

 

“ _What_?”

 

That was how a call turned Oliver's afternoon the next day upside down in five slow seconds.

 

What if whoever did it was associated with the people that kidnapped Sara? What if they were specifically targeting Lances, and Laurel and Dinah were next—for that matter, _what the hell was with Lances and getting kidnapped_?

 

He excuses himself from his meeting and finds Felicity waiting for him in the halls of Queen Consolidated. “What do we know?”

 

“Diggle and Sara tracked down the location. She's waiting on you before going in.”

 

“That was fast,” he answers, impressed and pleased.

 

“Well... Sara said she didn't want to disturb you with it until she was ready.”

 

Oh.

 

That puts a different spin on things.

 

“...I see. Do we know why he was kidnapped?”

 

“His job is to hunt down criminals? Someone had a grudge? I don't know, Oliver.”

 

“Well, let's get our detective back, hm?” And try not to panic. He's starting to develop a habit of losing Lances because he's brushed them aside. He _can't_ lose this one.

 

On the way into the warehouse where Lance is supposed to be held, Oliver splits off with Sara, hoping to meet back with her somewhere in the middle, but when he quietly creeps across the empty center, it's just him. He frowns, bow drawn, arrow tip pointing towards the ground as he scans the area.

 

“I was almost thinking you weren't going to show.”

 

Oliver locks up completely at the voice, nearly releasing his arrow. That... that can't be. That doesn't make any sense... How can it... He stares as Lance walks out from the shadows, looking unharmed and free of any bindings. Oliver's expression twists into pained confusion.

 

“This is actually quite sad,” Lance continues.

 

Very slowly, Oliver eases tension out from the bow and returns the arrow to his quiver. “What's going on?” he asks, trying to keep that quaver out of his voice, but the modulator picks up on it and amplifies it.

 

Lance bites at the inside of his cheek, shaking his head. “Well. Here's the thing. It took staging a kidnapping for you to _willingly_ come face to face with me. So, that's something.”

 

Oliver has to wait for his brain to fully absorb those words and then decipher the meaning to them. “You... This was a setup?”

 

“Yeah... Your friends helped make it sound believable...”

 

Some _friends_. Oliver scowls. He drops his bow and charges towards Lance, anger clouding his eyes. “I was fucking _worried about you_!” he roars.

 

Lance doesn't seem too bothered. “And here I thought you didn't have time for me.”

 

“I— _fuck you_!” Oliver hisses, pained. “I'd already started to assume the worst—assume that you had died!”

 

“What if I had, Oliver?” Lance asks, perfectly calm, but his eyes were sad.

 

Oliver jerks back as if he had been struck, and says nothing.

 

Lance walks towards him, careful, like he fears that Oliver is an animal that could bolt at any time. He reaches out with both hands, turning off Oliver's modulator with one, and pulling down the hood with the other.

 

“Why don't you think you're allowed to be happy, Oliver?” Lance asks. “All your friends think you have the right. I'm sure everyone that you've ever saved think that you have it, too.”

 

“I've done—I've done so many things, hurt so many people—”

 

Lance raises a brow. “Yeah? Sara says she's likely killed more people than you have. Kind of a weird conversation between father and daughter, but I guess that's what happens when your girl was an assassin for years. Still, _she_ thinks you deserve happiness.”

 

“Why won't you just let this go?” Oliver asks.

 

“Because I don't _want_ to. Why are _you_ running from it?” Lance counters.

 

Oliver glances away. “I feel like all I ever do is cause your family pain,” he mumbles.

 

Lance snorts. “Well, guess that means I'm pretty much immune to it at this point.”

 

“I'm not _joking_!” Oliver snaps.

 

“Yeah, I know. I've heard all of your not-jokes lately.” He puts a hand to the space under Oliver's chin and turns his head. “It's pretty hard to break me, Oliver. I think you'd have to actively try. Pull out all the stops. That sort of thing.”

 

“I don't think this is a good idea,” Oliver says in a last ditch attempt to put an end to this.

 

Lance shrugs. “You said that about the Harper kid getting us out of that building, and look how that turned out. Barely a scratch on us. Oh, _come on_ , will you just trust me for once in your life?”

 

Oliver wants to say _no_. It's ready in his head. A good, firm denial. He can do it. It would be better for them both, in the long run. He's trying to do the right thing.

 

He sees Sara distantly leaning against a railing, beaming down at him. When she realizes that he's noticed her, she gives him a thumbs up of encouragement, then ducks out of sight. He stares at the empty spot, unblinking, his mind tripping on the word “no” before he breaks his gaze away from where Sara had been, and reaches a hand around Lance's neck, pulling him in for a kiss.

 

Lance mumbles, “Finally,” against Oliver's lips and pulls him closer.

 

Oliver trails his teeth across Lance's cheek until he gets to his ear. “I swear to god,” Oliver says against the rim of his ear, “if you ever fake being kidnapped again, I'll put an arrow through you.”

 

Lance groans. Death threats should not sound that enticing. “Wouldn't dream of it. No promises that Sara won't try anything crazy though. Drastic measures seem to be the only way to get through your thick head.”

 

Oliver chuckles. “Seriously? Kissing and insulting me? How charming.”

 

“Shut up. You know me, you know what you're getting.” He looks Oliver in the eyes and smiles. “You, though. I think I look forward to finding you out.”

 

“That'll turn out to be quite the epic journey, I think.”

 

Lance kisses him again. “I got time,” he whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some things:  
> -I was listening to Toad the Wet Sprocket's "Enough" as my writing music. The title comes from that song.  
> -I attempted to get a better grasp on the effect of earthquakes on different kinds of building structures, but I was pretty much writing blind. Oops.  
> -I'm sure whoever kidnapped Sara regretted it very much...  
> -I have no idea what Felicity did with... anything. 8D; Or what Roy did, for that matter. Y-Yay complete BSing...?  
> -I'm sure there's more than I should mention and/or apologize for, but oh well.
> 
> UPDATE: Since posting, I've combed through again to get rid of typos, some of which were very cringe-worthy.


End file.
